


You are the player, Dream.

by seeds



Series: dream centric oneshots [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clay | Dream Needs a Hug (Video Blogging RPF), Demonic Possession, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Minecraft, Not Canon Compliant, Sad Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), real life minecraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:46:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29550915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seeds/pseuds/seeds
Summary: Dream finally defeats his dreamon, Nightmare. His friends are not the only ones who are proud of him for it.The universe is proud of him, DreamXD is proud of him.(aka. a fic in which the end poem is spoken).
Relationships: Clay | Dream & Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF) & Everyone, No Romantic Relationship(s)
Series: dream centric oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2171085
Comments: 11
Kudos: 217





	You are the player, Dream.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i just wanna say a few things before i get started with the actual fic. 
> 
> first off! the idea to use the end poem was completely inspired by Xali_Ali !! they wrote their own fic using it, the link it below :) i did change a few words (of the poem) to make it make sense, though. 
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/29447913 
> 
> secondly, as known, the end poem is in two different colors in the game, as if spoken by two different entities. the blue text of the poem is in italics, all spoken by DreamXD. the green text is bolded here, all spoken by a vessel for the universe. 
> 
> third, most of the words are the end poem, which i, obviously, did not write. here's the link to the end poem's page on a minecraft wiki, you can find the full poem there!
> 
> https://minecraft.gamepedia.com/End_Poem 
> 
> lastly, i just wanna thank you for reading this! for anyone who has seen my name before, i did not plan on going on a hiatus like this. for the past month that i've been gone. the breif pause has allowed me to keep up with schoolwork and my mental health. i have been working on my writing and ideas, and i'm ready to come back and post more work! i plan on writing more characters, more platonic fics/oneshots, and working harder on my projects. thank you for sticking around! 
> 
> now, on with the fic!

_Nightmare was slain by Dream._

Dream crashed to his knees, smiling in victory. his head was clear, his mind was his own, his body was his own. Tommy was cheering the loudest of his friends, all ecstatic that their friend was free. Suddenly, two figures appeared in the air in front of him. One being the easily recognizable DreamXD, the server’s god and protector.

The other was harder to recognize, but Dream remembered it from when he created the server. It was a vessel, a vessel for the universe. Suddenly, it said hello in a language no one understood. Tommy and Sapnap tried to approach him to heal his injuries, but he shooed them away. Maybe they couldn’t understand, but he could. 

> _DreamXD: I see the player you mean._
> 
> **Server: Dream?** ****

His name was the only thing they spoke in english, and his friends took notice of this 

> _Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can hear our thoughts._
> 
> **That doesn't matter. It thinks we are part of the game.**
> 
> _I like this player. It played well. It did not give up._
> 
> **It is listening to our thoughts as though they were inferior.**
> 
> _That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a game._
> 
> **Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.**
> 
> _They used to hear voices. Before players could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons._

Dream looked up in fear and confusion. He tried to stand up, but only to fall back down. The two figures move closer to him, continuing to talk, but standing in front of him.

> **What did this player dream?**
> 
> _This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter._
> 
> **Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this player create, in the reality behind the screen?**
> 
> _It worked, with a million others, to sculpt a true world in a fold of the [scrambled], and created a [scrambled] for [scrambled], in the [scrambled]._
> 
> **It cannot read that thought.**
> 
> _No. It has not yet achieved the highest level. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a game._

This confused him. He slowly moved to take off his mask.

> **Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?**

The statement alone almost made him sob. He reached out to touch one of the figures, but his hand simply went through. 

> _Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes._
> 
> **But there are times it is sad, in the long dream. It creates worlds that have no summer, and it shivers under a black sun, and it takes its sad creation for reality.**
> 
> _To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot interfere._

They never interfered even when he begged for help, begged for the dreamon to be taken away, they never did. And, oddly enough, he was thankful for that. it made him strong, it showed him how to be strong. 

> **Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them, they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to speak the word they fear.**

He does fear. and he doesn’t understand. He wants them to help him understand because, for a while, he hasn’t had the chance to even attempt to understand.

> _It hears our thoughts._
> 
> **Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely [scrambled] and [scrambled], I wish to tell them that they are [scrambled] in the [scrambled]. They see so little of reality, in their long dream.**

His brain couldn’t recognize some of the words, but he tried to brush past it. He wanted to understand. 

> _And yet they play the game._
> 
> **But it would be so easy to tell them...**
> 
> _Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them living._
> 
> **I will not tell the player how to live.**

He grabbed the sides of his head and pushed, trying to make sense of the situation.

> _The player is growing restless._
> 
> **I will tell the player a story.**
> 
> _But not the truth._
> 
> **No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.**

“The truth...please,” he whispered, not knowing if anyone else could hear him or not. 

> _Give it a body, again._
> 
> **Yes. Player...**
> 
> _Use its name._
> 
> **Dream. Player of games.**

His name was spoken in English again, recognizable by his friends. 

> _Good_.
> 
> **Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things.**

He slowly took his hands off his head and clenched his fists, wiggled his toes, moved his arms, blinked, took deep breaths. He was alive, he was here, he was real. “Who...” he asked softly, looking up with teary eyes. 

> _Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The words change. We do not change._
> 
> **We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.**

He nodded. They were everything he needed to know about, and he was willing to listen 

> **Once upon a time, there was a player.**
> 
> _The player was you, Dream._

“M-me?” he asked, but received no answer. 

> **Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was information from a star, and it could burn your skin from a hundred and fifty million kilometres away.**
> 
> **Sometimes the player dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.**
> 
> _Sometimes the player dreamed it was lost in a story._
> 
> **Sometimes the player dreamed it was other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the player woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third.**
> 
> _Sometimes the player dreamed it watched words on a screen._

He didn’t name himself Dream, no one named him Dream. It just felt...right. so, maybe that’s why it felt right. Cause the universe told him so, told him it was correct. 

> **Let's go back.**

Yes, let’s go back, please. Let me understand. He pleaded silently but knew they could hear him.

> **The atoms of the player were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A woman gathered the atoms; she drank and ate and inhaled; and the woman assembled the player, in her body.**
> 
> **And the player awoke, from the warm, dark world of its mother's body, into the long dream.**
> 
> **And the player was a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And the player was a new program, never run before, generated by a sourcecode a billion years old. And the player was a new human, never alive before, made from nothing but milk and love.**
> 
> _You are the player. The story. The program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love._

“It’s me...” he said. Dream was more than a normal player, he was an Admin. He was the world, and the world was him. 

> **Let's go further back.**
> 
> **The seven billion billion billion atoms of the player's body were created, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the player, too, is information from a star. And the player moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a man called Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small, private world created by the player, who inhabits a universe created by...**
> 
> _Shush. Sometimes the player created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes it built a model of the universe in its head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes it called those flecks "electrons" and "protons"._
> 
> **Sometimes it called them "planets" and "stars".**

He did do this. He created a server where he promised peace to his friends. it didn’t work, but he tried. 

> **Sometimes it believed it was in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes it believed it was playing a game. Sometimes it believed it was reading words on a screen.**
> 
> _You are the player, reading words..._

I am the player, he thinks, I am the player. 

> **Shush... Sometimes the player read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realised it was alive, it was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, the player was alive**
> 
> _You. You. You are alive._

“I am alive.” he says, almost as if he’s convincing himself. He doesn’t believe he’s alive, but he is. And he needs to remember, he needs to believe that.

> **and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees**

It spoke to him the day he made flower crowns with Niki, Tubbo, and Eret. It spoke to him when the wind blew flowers into his hands, leaves off of the grass, hair out of their faces. 

> _and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again_

It spoke to him when he was stargazing with George, Sapnap, and Bad and a shooting star would appear every time he thought of a new wish. It spoke to him when, somehow, Phil found him sitting alone when his friends went home that night and invited him back for dinner, happily enjoying the night with Tommy, Wilbur, Techno, and (obviously) Phil. 

> **and sometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream**

It spoke to him when his communicator would beep with messages that no one else would receive, when it gave him the reassurance he needed 

> _and the universe said I love you_

His breath hitched, eyes brimming with tears. 

> **and the universe said you have played the game well**

“I tried...” he whispered

> _and the universe said everything you need is within you_

He started crying, tears flowing freely down his face as he smiled. 

> **and the universe said you are stronger than you know**

“I am strong.”

> _and the universe said you are the daylight_

“I am the daylight.”

> **and the universe said you are the night**

“I am the night.”

> _and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you_
> 
> **and the universe said the light you seek is within you**
> 
> _and the universe said you are not alone_

“I am not alone,” he said, a sob escaping his throat at the end of the sentence. 

> **and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing**
> 
> _and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code_
> 
> **and the universe said I love you because you are love.**

He was sobbing now, wrapping himself in his own arms and wailing loudly. 

> _And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love._

“The player was ok.” He said. He didn’t care for his own volume now, couldn’t find it in himself to care. The final lines were said in English. 

> _You are the player,_ _Dream_ _._
> 
> **Wake up.**

And he cried as they disappeared into the air, seemingly leaving him alone. That’s when he felt hands on his face. He looked up and saw sapnap holding his face, wiping his tears with his thumbs. “Dream?”

He took a sharp inhale.

“I’m...not alone.”

“You’re not alone.”

“And I’m alive?”

“You are alive.”

“And...I dreamed. And I’ll dream again. And I’ll be ok.”

Sapnap smiled, pulling his friend into a hug. “You will be. You’ll be ok.” And if it took some convincing from the universe to tell him that, then it was settled.

He would be ok.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed! all kudos, comments, and others are greatly appreciated. 
> 
> here's a reminder that you are extremely valid, loved, and cared for. take care of yourself and stay safe <3


End file.
